Film on a Bender - Fri. Mar. 4th - 8PM

Oddball Films presents Film on a Bender, a night of film drenched in booze with intoxicating cartoons, rare all-star television, sauced soundies, alcoholic commercials and (of course) shocking educational shorts; all on 16mm film from the archive. Join Patty Duke and Rue McLanahan for a very special episode of Catholic mental-hygiene show Insight: A Slight Drinking Problem (1977). Four friends head out for a day of fishing, but head over a cliff instead in Social Drinking: Fun and Fatal (1974). In the early Chuck Jones cartoon Naughty but Mice (1939), Sniffles the mouse gets drunk on cough syrup and tangles with an electric razor. Bill's got a nagging wife, a terrible commute, a high-pressure job and worst of all, a nasty Hangover (1978). Be on the jury for one Mr. "Al K. Hall" while he defends himself against a barrage of witnesses whose lives he affected in the ridiculous cartoon The Day They Tried Alcohol (1976). Watch who you're drinking with in the cowboy soundie Seven Beers with the Wrong Woman (1941). With a drunk-tank full of Lucky Beer Commercials (1960s) and loaded excerpts, like Robert Mitchum narrating America on the Rocks (1973), drunk-driving massacre Just Another Friday Night (1984) and so much more!

A sobering episode of Catholic mental hygiene show Insight starring Patty "Sparkle Neely Sparkle" Duke (Valley of the Dolls) and Golden Girl Rue McClanahan. Jim is an alcoholic. He denies it and so does his wife Loretta (Duke). Yet his repeated alcoholic escapades cause her acute embarrassment and suffering. In desperation, Loretta attends an Al-Anon meeting. She forces Jim to face the truth about himself.

Social Drinking: Fun and Fatal (Color, 1974, 504)A fishing trip turns into a disaster when four young men (that look like they're on their way to Folsom Street Fair) are killed while driving under the influence. Realistically recreates a tragic accident while covering the one-drink-per-hour concept, stages of intoxication, hard liquor vs. beer or wine and various drinking reflexes.

Naughty But Mice(Color, 1939)

Sniffles the mouse - in his first appearance in a Warner Bros. cartoon - goes to a drugstore and gets drunk on a cold remedy, then befriends an electric razor and gets it drunk as well. One of the first films directed by legendary animator Chuck Jones for Warner Brothers.

Hangover (Color, 1978)

This is no hilarious buddy comedy. Bill has a problem, a problem a lot of us are facing right now, he had too much fun last night, and now he’s got to face the day. Face the shakiness of his hands, face the “nag nag nag” of his wife, Bess, face the morning commute. And that’s just before he has to go operate heavy machinery at work. I hope it was worth it, Bill.

Lucky Beer Commercial Highlights From the 1960s (Color, 1960s)They don’t make commercials like this anymore. From kooky animated films with figures like Christopher Columbus, the Wright Brothers, Comedian Rich Little in a space suit in a lunar landscape, with a mountain goat (!), jumping out of a airplane, in front of a steamroller to cartoon cavemen with bows and arrows these spots pull out all the stops in their attempts to sell their product.

Seven Beers With the Wrong Woman (B+W, 1941)

This intoxicating soundie with comedian Snub Pollard and Greta Granstedt is the musical answer to the earlier hit song Seven Beers with the Wrong Man. Opens with the Chump in bandages starting to sing about drinking with the wrong woman. Fades to the bar scene with the chump in a neat suit and bow tie, and the girl comes downstairs in a frilly dress. The husband saunters up wearing a Davie Crockett hat and beats him up with the bartender.

America On The Rocks (Color, 1973, excerpt)

Hilarious but ultimately (alas) sobering documentary on America’s favorite pastime- getting loaded. Narrated by Robert Mitchum (a rather legendary drinker himself), the film starts off on a merry-go-round filled with drunks, and then explores the history, the nightlife and the perils of Boozelandia.

Curator’s BiographyKat Shuchter is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Film Studies. She is a filmmaker, artist and esoteric film hoarder. She has helped program shows at the PFA, The Nuart and Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater and was crowned “Found Footage Queen” of Los Angeles, 2009. She has programmed over 200 shows at Oddball on everything from puberty primers to experimental animation.About Oddball FilmsOddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.

Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.